Bubblewrap
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: As morbid as it sounds, Roger's death and subsequent funeral is what finally sets Mark's life into motion. Gen. Oneshot.


**A/N: Came up with this at calling hours for deceased Uncle David two or so years ago. Rediscovered it when I was cleaning up my flash drive and thought I'd throw you guys an angsty oneshot because why not. Sorry for the angst? (Not really :P)**

Disclaimer: _Mark and Roger are definitely not my property._

**Bubblewrap**

Death came a lot more suddenly than Mark had anticipated.

It swept through the loft like a wildfire, somehow worse than April's bloody, violent prologue. First it was Mimi, her candle finally flickering out just a week after her miraculous recovery, and then it was Collins joining Angel in heaven that March, and finally, all eyes turned to Roger.

He didn't think about it. He couldn't. Mark knew his role; he knew that he was supposed to be there when Maureen broke down, as she seemed liable to do lately. Hell, all of them were high strung, and he seemed like the natural candidate for the Rock. He would be her anchor, both of their anchors, as long as they needed him. That had always been his job anyways.

Mark was less than pleased to be running out of people to depend on him.

And Roger- he wasn't _allowed_ to die. Mark had remained dry-eyed through the last four funerals, always staying hopeful, always being strong for the rest of them. He had to remain optimistic. But this was Roger and Roger was a special case.

He was his best friend. His brother, practically. His Roger. Mark had developed a somewhat disconcerting habit of referring to Roger as _his_, and so far kicking it had been a miserable failure. It only served to strengthen his conviction, though, that Roger was simply not allowed to die on him. Because if Roger died…

He'd be alone.

It happened without warning. No one could ever have seen it coming. Somehow, defying all of the odds, Roger had escaped death via the human immunodeficiency virus and instead suffered a fatal heart attack one quiet morning in June. And Mark, unable to believe that this was happening, watched as the paramedics carted his body away, proclaiming him dead.

Of all of the things that he had thought would kill Roger, it wasn't those damn cigarettes.

Maybe if he'd actually followed through when he told Roger he was going to force him to quit, this would never have happened…

He had half a mind to insist they leave the body, guard it with his life, but his logic got the better of him. Roger wasn't there anymore. He told it to himself over and over again, and still it took most of the next day to absorb. _He's not here._

For the first time, Mark felt truly alone. The feeling crept up on him without his permission. His best friend in the world was dead and gone and finally, there was the funeral to plan.

He couldn't listen to Maureen and Joanne and Benny, dropping by to offer their condolences for something he hadn't even yet had time to process. Mark had never been good with his other people's emotions, let alone his own, and it was going to be a long and painful journey of self-discovery before he could even begin to understand what had happened.

That night was spent up on the roof, chain-smoking Roger's last pack of cigarettes. If you had asked him what he was doing, Mark would have said that he was getting Roger's money's worth just the way he would have wanted. He choked his way through each of them, playing with Roger's battered old lighter between drags, and stared up at the stars in a daze.

By morning he smelled like a chimney sweep and looked like a zombie, not at all the Mark Cohen that everyone and anyone could depend upon.

But the next day, when he was tentatively asked by a skittish Maureen if he'd decided on a funeral home yet, he was back on his feet.

Pink, he says, pink roses. Roger was never much of a manly man, hardly even tried once his rockstar days were over. He'd always been a bit of a romantic and nobody dared contest Mark when he said it, because who else had spent so many nights and days and in-betweens sharing a beer with the deceased, talking about everything and anything from which movie star they'd rather bang to what they thought heaven must be like, if there was one at all.

The preparations are all that keep him sane. It's all a blur – the announcement, the obituary in the paper, the phone calls and the fits of grief from everyone around him.

Mark doesn't think. He runs on autopilot, hardly understanding, still knowing exactly what to say. Maureen watches him with growing concern as he smiles grimly and plows through the day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Breathe in, breathe out. Roger's not dead, he's just sleeping.

Of course, Roger is dead, and inevitably, the day of the funeral does come. Roger's mother is there. _Mark's_ mother is there, and she's brought flowers. She's crying. Everyone is crying.

Everyone except Mark.

Mark doesn't feel anything. Mark stares at the casket as it's lowered into the ground. They hadn't had an open casket at calling hours, because Roger thought that was creepy and Mark privately agreed, so he could almost imagine that it wasn't his best friend being covered by dirt. Buried. Forgotten.

Nausea stirs warm in his gut, but he just keeps staring, blue and intense like a glacier.

Even Benny cries, when they lower the body into the ground. Mark pats him on the shoulder and leaves his hand there for a long moment, closing his eyes, drawing it all into himself. Into the core of him, cracked and still shaken as it was.

In an odd way, it's almost worrying. If anything could break him, it should have been Roger.

He thinks about it, abstractly and between murmured condolences, until the last flower has been cast. Until everything is sniffles and silence, and the priest had bowed his head in prayer.

Someone has to speak.

Someone is _Mark_.

He'd almost forgotten about this, in the whirlwind of other preparations he'd thrown himself into this past week. Between picking up a covert smoking habit and planning out an entire funeral, between calling hours and the oppressive silence of the drive to the cemetery in Joanne's car, between giving the eulogy and watching the remnants of Roger Davis descend into the earth like a dream – he'd drifted, dreamlike, wrapped up in his in denial like bubblewrap.

But this is actually happening.

Everyone is looking at him.

Mark turns on his heel, looks uneasily into the heart of the crowd – to Maureen, leaning on Benny's shoulder, Joanne's arm around her waist, the tear-streaked vestiges of his old brood – and opens his mouth to speak.

And closes it.

Tears spring to his eyes suddenly, without warning, and he hardly has a moment to feel scandalously betrayed by his own tear ducts before he has to turn around and stare down into the hole again, in disbelief.

The bubble has been popped. All of the bubbles have been popped.

Roger is gone, and these people – the ones surrounding him – are all he has left.

That and the endless reels stacked dusty in the back of his closet.

Memories.

He stares, and stares, and feels hands on his back. He can't speak. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to speak again, until Maureen hugs him so tightly from behind that they're forced from his chest, a tight sob of a farewell.

"Roger – Roger – I love you, Roger." He's definitely crying now, snotting down the front of his face, but Maureen's got him tight, rocking him and Joanne's arm slips around his shoulders as well, and Benny claps a hand on his shoulder, and he sobs out loud, eyes screwed shut. "God, Roger, you asshole, you'd better wait for me."

And against all odds, behind him, the crying turns to laughter.

And after a moment, so does his.

Mark turns into the knot of his closest friends and opens his arms, and lets them in with no padding between them. He wants to feel everything.

He's sick of being numb. Roger and Mimi, Collins and Angel, even April – they're all watching him, he's sure, shaking their heads and goading him. Dare to live, Mark, why don't you? Just try it. You might like it.

He hears it in Roger's voice, dripping with sarcasm, a grin at the end of the words.

The dirt piles over the casket, and Mark hugs his friends together, then one by one, and feels every second of hurt there is to have.

It was time to stop living a half life. Past time, actually.

Later, he buys a bouquet of pink roses and sets them on the metal table in an old vase of Mimi's. It's almost like she's there.

But they're all there, he knows, in spirit.

If not in spirit, in him.


End file.
